Alan Turing
Father of computer science
British mathematician and codebreaker (1912-1954).
Defined what a computer IS — in 1936, before any computer existed — with the idea of a 'Turing machine.' At Bletchley Park he cracked Nazi Enigma, estimated to have shortened WWII by two years. Persecuted for being gay, chemically castrated, dead at 41 from cyanide; the Queen pardoned him in 2013.
Famous for
- Turing machine + theory of computation
- Cracked Enigma at Bletchley Park
- Turing test (machine intelligence)
- Early work on morphogenesis
In Rubicon
Alan Turing is one of the historical characters you can play as in Rubicon, a trivia game where you answer in your own words and an AI judge reads what you meant. Alan Turing is filed under Technology & Engineering, and is strongest at Technology & Engineering and Natural Sciences.
Others in Technology & Engineering
- Nikola Tesla — Alternating current + wireless dreams
- Alexander Graham Bell — Invented the telephone
- Archimedes of Syracuse — Eureka! + war machines
- Ada Lovelace — First computer programmer
- Hedy Lamarr — Movie star + frequency hopping
- Charles Babbage — Father of the computer